Computex will bring Android + ARM tablets, but are they ready?

Computex Taipei is coming up next week, and tech watchers should brace for the impending wave of "iPad-killer" stories. Most of the upcoming tablet offerings out of Asia will run Google's Android operating system—not because it's a great tablet OS, but because it's free, available, and has a growing roster of apps. The tablets will also be based on ARM, and could undercut the price of the iPad significantly.

VIA has been doing a pre-Computex press roadshow to build buzz for products based on its new ARM products. Perhaps best known for holding a distant third-place in the x86 market, tiny VIA is also an ARM licensee and will be competing with Samsung, Qualcomm, Freescale, Marvell, TI, NVIDIA, Apple, and the rest of the known universe in making ARM-based chips aimed at tablets and smartbooks.

VIA marketing director Ken Brown told PC World to expect tablets based on VIA and Android to range in price from $100 to $150. Though he didn't give any hints as to form factor, it's very unlikely at those prices that he's talking about anything the size of an iPad.

The odds are better that a $150 VIA/Android tablet will look something like what the New York Times'Ashlee Vance describes in a recent article as "iPad flankers"—smaller, cheaper tablets from laptop OEMs like Foxconn that aim not to supplant the iPad, but to cannibalize a bit of its potential market share on the low end. Such "flankers" are essentially the mythical mobile Internet device (MID) that failed to take off when Intel was pushing the concept. We'll see how well the MID fares with ARM inside.

VIA's entry into the tablet chip race may come as a bit of a surprise, so we're not quite sure what to expect in terms of performance and features.

The other PC chip maker that is eyeing the ARM tablet market is NVIDIA, which will be heavily pushing Tegra 2 next week. We're heading over the Netbook Summit in San Francisco today to try to get some hands-on time with a Tegra 2 tablet without having to fly to Taipei. Expectations are high for this next version of Tegra because, given NVIDIA's 3D prowess, it could outdo Apple's A4 in bringing the bling to a tablet UI. In fact, a Tegra 2 tablet may actually be able to run Flash without bringing the tablet's processor to its knees (battery life is another story).

The one fly in the ARM/Android tablet ointment is the fact that none of the apps in the Android Market are designed for a tablet interface. And, even if they were, the fact that Android tablets will come in a variety of screen resolutions will make things a mess. Right now, it looks like the early Android tablet adopters will be running apps in some kind of janky upscaled mode—and when the "Android HD" apps do finally arrive, they may be optimized for a screen resolution that your device doesn't support. This is likely to make things ugly with a capital "U."

Of course, the real solution for a Google tablet is to ditch Android entirely and use Chrome OS. This development is probably coming sooner than you think, given that the usual ARM suspects are working fast and furious to get the Chrome OS ARM port ready. Chrome OS plus HTML5, WebGL, and some amount of native client execution support make up the long-term future of Google-driven tablet computing. But, until all of those pieces are ready for primetime, users will have to content themselves with whatever the Android hackers can come up with.

Yeah, but why not ARM netbooks/notebooks? Oh, that's because they refuse to use quad core until 2011, even though the IP has been available for years, nor provide more than one physical processor, nor do they wish to actually provide a SO-DIMM slot, though of course that's solved by simply providing enough low power DDR(2/3/whatever) on board. Regardless of the linux distro being used, I would think there would be a considerable market for low power computers, desktop or portable. Yet, by the time such hardware even comes out, Intel would have released or be close to releasing the 22nm shrink of Sandy Bridge.

Edit: The point is that ARM implementations will already be behind by the time they come out, yet current implementations could be great if only they would try.

I think the point was the differing screen resolutions apps will have to adapt to makes it harder for developers and consumers alike. If you go from 480X320 to 960X640, then the OS can just double up the pixel and be done with it. When you also have 1024X600, 1024X768, 800X600, 1280X800, etc., it means you have to make sure your UI can handle all that without compromising usability or look a scaled up fulgy mess.

Its not resolutions, its going to be screen size that the issue with the tablets. Android Apps scale fine with screen res changes but all cell phones screens are about the same physical seize, with the tablets that not true. It't just going to be harder to pick the right proportional button and text sizes for things like tablets.

As for Chrome OS, that would be a very stupid thing to do. At this point, Chrome OS should become an App on Android. It's just Chrome the browser running on a linux install, why keep out all the great apps, when you don't have to.

WTF are you even talking about? Did you forget the vast majority of "iPad apps" are really iPhone apps but scaled up??? Android apps are usually built to fit higher res screens anyway. Ars is a very viable and respectable source of information and this sort of journalism should be stopped right away. Seriously, if I were running Ars you'd be out of a job right now.

Right now, it looks like the early Android tablet adopters will be running apps in some kind of janky upscaled mode—and when the "Android HD" apps do finally arrive, they may be optimized for a screen resolution that your device doesn't support. This is likely to make things ugly with a capital "U."

And this is different from all the iPad-only applications not running on an iPhone how?

"Of course, the real solution for a Google tablet is to ditch Android entirely and use Chrome OS. "

Yes, because it's absolutely impossible to support multiple resolutions, and or multiple versions of apps for different devices. Unless of course you are Apple. But if you aren't Apple you should just give up and do everything in a browser, where resolution apparently isn't an issue.

The screen resolution on current Android phones ranges from 240x320 to 480x854 and includes several in between (320x480, 240x400, and 480x800). Throw in tablets and it will grow in variety. It's not like the PC world where the screen is larger than your app and you have some room. Aside from that pixel count isn't the only issue. Android devices also have multiple pixel densities. 480x800 is great, but on a 3.5" screen, you can't just squeeze everything in or the user won't be able to read it.

You can call it FUD, but it's a legitimate issue for Android and Android developers. Freedom and choice are great, but they're not without trade offs. The same is going to wind up being true of memory, processor speed and other device features. It's like the PC world, but you can't upgrade your own components.

This article is talking about low end devices. Good Android devices will come out with good memory, good processors, and good screen resolutions. The people that buy these $100 things will probably find themselves hunting through the Android Market looking for something that will work on their cheap devices, while people that buy a higher quality device will be fine.

"Google's Android operating system—not because it's a great tablet OS"

How do you know? Have you had the chance to use Android on a tablet? If so mentioning that along with why you felt that way would add a lot of credibility to such a opinionated statement. I'd love to hear a few details about why Android is not a great tablet OS.

Since you're referencing the iPad as the current tablet to beat, do you feel the iPhone OS is a great table OS? What does that have that the Android implementations won't? How do you know they won't have those features?

An OS and the applications that run on top of it having to work with different resolutions isn't exactly a new problem. Nearly every application developed for desktop OSs or accessed through a browser on those OSs has had to worry about that since the invention of the GUI. In fact the Android developers have a head start in this department because it's a problem they've already had to work with.

"Google's Android operating system—not because it's a great tablet OS"

How do you know? Have you had the chance to use Android on a tablet? If so mentioning that along with why you felt that way would add a lot of credibility to such a opinionated statement. I'd love to hear a few details about why Android is not a great tablet OS.

I realize that there are a lot of non-native English speakers here, so maybe that's why you're misinterpreting the sentence. The sentence was "not because it's a great tablet OS, but because it's free..." and this is not equivalent to the sentence "it's not a great tablet OS."

I would really like a bit more actual knowledge applied to such articles. The fact is that Android is much better prepared to deal with different screen resolutions than the iPhone OS. Android can deal with varying pixel densities as well as with more "room" on the screen. The iPhone OS has almost nothing to offer here, every app has to be designed to work with the existing screen resolutions.

On the other hand, just have it working may be not enough. iPhone/iPad apps can be really optimized for the two (or soon three) screens they will run at while Android apps will have to adapt to lots of different screens without being really good at any of these.

I wouldn't be shocked though if Android tablets would stamp the iPad more or less into the ground just by the sheer masses of cheap devices flooding the market.

Of course, the real solution for a Google tablet is to ditch Android entirely and use Chrome OS.

I don't think it's a viable choice considering all that R&D that went into Android (and actively going now). A slate 'made' by Google might use Chrome OS, but not the slate made by Asus.

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VIA marketing director Ken Brown told PC World to expect tablets based on VIA and Android to range in price from $100 to $150.

Garbage. We don't need a resurrection of crappy netbook in a slate format. What we need is an Android-based tablet with decent hardware spec (good 10' screen with multitouch, >1Ghz processor, at least a couple Gb of internal storage + SD card), solid manufacturer support with timely updates and at a 50-70% price point of Apple's entry-level iPad. If they want to capture potential iPad's audience, they aren't going to do it with a $150 price point.

Meh. Lots of irrational enthusiasm for an Android Tablet. Jon's points are all right on. So instead of poisoning the well by claiming fanboy bias how about you refute them? For example how could Android easily support multiple resolutions, etc? I certainly don't think Android is ready for prime time yet. It's pretty fugly and not optimized for touch Apps. You know, just because you don't like the truth doesn't mean it's not true. I'm looking forward to the top-down vs bottom-up competition. It's already raised the bar for Apple with the Nexus One.

I would really like a bit more actual knowledge applied to such articles. The fact is that Android is much better prepared to deal with different screen resolutions than the iPhone OS. Android can deal with varying pixel densities as well as with more "room" on the screen. The iPhone OS has almost nothing to offer here, every app has to be designed to work with the existing screen resolutions.

Except, the author never claimed that the iPhone OS deals with differing screen resolutions better than Android. But the fact is that the iPhone OS has to deal with only 2 screen sizes. The iPhone, and the iPad. And even then Apple recommends building a different interface for the iPad (and there are many iPad only apps already).

OTOH, Android will have to face many many different screen size/resolution combinations. Just within the screen size spectrum, these devices will span all sorts of sizes from 3" to 11".

Wow, as an Android developer, I'm shocked by the low quality of this article. The Android SDK already has a great deal built in to handle multiple resolutions, and it is extremely easy to handle them.

It is literally as simple as putting layouts and assets into separate folders called drawable-hdpi, drawable-mdpi, and drawable-ldpi. (Or alternatively, drawable-small, drawable-medium, drawable-large)

So if you want to target all current phone screen resolutions, for the assets that would be affected by screen size (like backgrounds and the like) you just need to create an appropriate asset for the size and stick it in the folder. Android will AUTOMATICALLY use the appropriate assets depending on the phone it is running on.

HDPI and Large are defined as screens between 3.5-4.3 inches, with resolutions of 480x800, 480x854, etc.

In order to support larger screen sizes and have the apps scale gracefully, Google just needs to add a few more folders to choose from. Perhaps drawable-slate-small, drawable-slate-medium, drawable-slate-large.

Then you chuck the larger assets into those folders, and let the Android magic handle the rest. You will have an app that scales gracefully from something as small as 200x320 all the way up to.. well pretty much anything.

This is, ironically WAY better than the way iphoneOS handles things, and yet, the author has no problem with the way the iPad was launched, with current apps running either in a FUGLY system scaled, pixel-doubled way, or running as a tiny app surrounded by black-ness... requiring SPECIFIC iPadHD apps to be released.

REALLY? The author clearly has no clue how Android works, and seems to believe that only Apple is capable of handling different resolutions. Stupid shill.

All that's going to happen with these products is people are going to buy them, realzie that they're too underpowered to do the things they want to do or the battery life is way too small and then be upset that they blew 100 or 200 bucks. People are upset about Stokes comparing thingss with the iPad. Well, what the fuck else is he supposed to be comparing with right now? The cheap $100 chinese knockoffs are low quality to be sure, altho the Archos 7 is probably a more comparable item to what will be coming out in many ways. The iPad is cruising along at 200k sales a week tho, so of course it will get brought up in comparison with other MIDs.

Wow, as an Android developer, I'm shocked by the low quality of this article. The Android SDK already has a great deal built in to handle multiple resolutions, and it is extremely easy to handle them.

Really? You're an Android developer?

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It is literally as simple as putting layouts and assets into separate folders called drawable-hdpi, drawable-mdpi, and drawable-ldpi. (Or alternatively, drawable-small, drawable-medium, drawable-large)

Alternatively? No. The drawable-small, drawable-medium, and drawable-large directories specify different screen sizes. They're not alternatives to the -ldpi, -mdpi, and -hdpi directories.

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So if you want to target all current phone screen resolutions, for the assets that would be affected by screen size (like backgrounds and the like) you just need to create an appropriate asset for the size and stick it in the folder. Android will AUTOMATICALLY use the appropriate assets depending on the phone it is running on.

Assets, yes. Layouts, no. The aspect ratio of the screen can only be defined by -long and -notlong. Which means according to Android, the 480x320 screen has the same aspect ratio as a 854x480 screen; the result is that defining a layout that utilizes a Droid screen efficiently is a giant pain in the ass.

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In order to support larger screen sizes and have the apps scale gracefully, Google just needs to add a few more folders to choose from. Perhaps drawable-slate-small, drawable-slate-medium, drawable-slate-large.

How is this different from drawable-small, drawable-medium, and drawable-large?

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Then you chuck the larger assets into those folders, and let the Android magic handle the rest. You will have an app that scales gracefully from something as small as 200x320 all the way up to.. well pretty much anything.

As an Android developer, I wish that were true. It's not hard to do by any means, but it's not nearly this simple either.

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REALLY? The author clearly has no clue how Android works, and seems to believe that only Apple is capable of handling different resolutions. Stupid shill.

Frankly, I'd rather target a small but fixed number of screen sizes and resolutions with separate layouts and assets (which you have to do anyway on Android) than a huge number of screen sizes and resolutions with scaling layouts and assets.

Not to mention that support for all of this resolution independence is not available on Android 1.5 which powers one third of all Android devices.

I think in a lot of ways this reflects Android vs iPhone OS or PC vs Mac. There's more choices, more freedom, more flexibility, and lower price depending on your choice. But in trade, you give up some refinement, that hard-to-quantify Apple "magic" (lots of people believe it, though most Ars readers don't), and again depending on your choice, a nicer form factor.

Basically, if iPad provides what you want, at a price you accept, it works for you. If you want something different or cheaper (and as a consequence can give up some things), check out the Android tablets. Really, if you spend a comparable amount of money, you can get a comparable non-Apple product most of the time. Personally I switched from iPhone to Droid and would find it hard to go back, and Apple's new developer restrictions make me feel - which is not based on the devices/OS themselves - like staying away from iPhone OS.

The app thing is another matter entirely. You can find tons of crap in Android marketplace and the Apple store. There's a bunch of great apps in both too. I can't speak to the ratio or how it differs between the two stores.

I think the point was the differing screen resolutions apps will have to adapt to makes it harder for developers and consumers alike. If you go from 480X320 to 960X640, then the OS can just double up the pixel and be done with it. When you also have 1024X600, 1024X768, 800X600, 1280X800, etc., it means you have to make sure your UI can handle all that without compromising usability or look a scaled up fulgy mess.

That's just stupid. Desktop OS's ( apart from OS X which still lacks dpi scaling option) can handle all sort of resolutions without a problem. Tablet OS's will be able to do the same as well.

Most of the upcoming tablet offerings out of Asia will run Google's Android operating system—not because it's a great tablet OS, but because it's free, available, and has a growing roster of apps.

This is the interesting and thought provoking comment. Imagine, its the early eighties, and we are hearing about an exhibition of PC hardware someplace in the US, with entries from lots and lots of companies. And someone says, they all run DOS. Not that there is anything so great about DOS, but its available.... Or its a bit later, and they now all run Windows. Not that there is anything so great about Windows, but its available....

A bit later on Apple is proclaiming to the world that 3% marketshare was all it ever wanted. Who cares about market share?

Meh. Lots of irrational enthusiasm for an Android Tablet. Jon's points are all right on. So instead of poisoning the well by claiming fanboy bias how about you refute them? For example how could Android easily support multiple resolutions, etc? I certainly don't think Android is ready for prime time yet. It's pretty fugly and not optimized for touch Apps. You know, just because you don't like the truth doesn't mean it's not true.

Android is a touch OS, sheesh!

It already handles different screen resolutions.

The paradigm for apps that support both "phone view" and "tablet view" is to use the same vertical UI that most phone apps utilise on both devices - just that on the tablet it is on one side of the screen with the rest of the screen being a panel for data display, that on the phone app has to replace the vertical UI. See iPad Mail as an example. Clearly the panel size can be variant.

Of course this doesn't apply to all applications, but on an app-by-app basis you can deal with it, it's just a bit more developer time - and that might be worth it for an extra 10 million potential customers.

And of course the iPad shows that there's a massive amount of room for creating large-screen touch UIs that require the tablet form factor.

But that's not even the point. The vast majority of the Android applications are optimized for low-resolution screens regardless of how many high-resolution devices are out there.

The apps are optimized for small screen sizes. The touchable area for a button on a 320x480 3.5" screen and on a 480x800 3.5" screen is the same, the button just looks nicer on the higher resolution screen.

Tablets are likely to have the same screen dpi as a 320x480 3.5" display, as typically used by an Android phone. The problem turns into one of realigning your UI to work on the 3.5" display, and the 7"-10" display - making everything bigger isn't the solution here.

So you'll get apps that support both within the single app because the application can easily handle such views, you'll get apps that have two versions, and you'll get apps that are available for one or the other only.

Why would people want to buy ChromeOS devices? You can't make use of locally stored media with those, only streaming. And WebGL support ain't here yet, much less WebGL for mobile devices. ChromeOS is still a good five years away from being more attractive than Android OS, Web OS or iPhone OS X, if it ever will be. Note that everything ChromeOS can do, Android OS can also do, or can be made to do relatively easily.

Well, yes, in so far as I'll be releasing a game soon. Mind you, I'm not a great programmer by any stretch of the imagination... so I apologize if I've gotten my terms mixed up, and my partner is far better a programmer than I.

You are correct about the differences between pixel density (ldpi,mdpi,hdpi) and screen sizes (small,medium,large). It was an error, and I got called out.

Your comment about layouts however I'm a little confused about. You can specify different layouts just as you can assets, using the same parameters res/layout-small,res/layout-medium (including hdpi,mdpi,ldpi) in addition to adding the long and notlong parameters. (And the land,port versions)

dmitriyk wrote:

How is this different from drawable-small, drawable-medium, and drawable-large?

drawable-large is for screens:

WVGA (480x800), 4.8"-5.5" diagonalFWVGA (480x854), 5.0"-5.8" diagonal

The "slate" sizes would need to be added to support screens up to.. what.. 10.7"? For more granularity, they might need to change the DPI options as well, but I believe that most of those screens would fall in the ldpi or mdpi categories.

My friend has a droid, and I have a G1, and so far, we've had no problems with the different resolutions and screen sizes. Mind you, it's not a terribly crazy game as we're just using a lot of imageviews and relativelayouts and simple animation. There is a little blur factor on some of the backgrounds on the droid (need to clean that up) but the layouts have held remarkably well. (Possibly we just don't have that much going on, so it's easy?) I don't know what would happen if you ran our app on a 9.7" screen or larger, but *shrug* I just haven't found it to be as challenging as I expected.

I don't know. Being a crappy programmer and hearing all of the FUD about android fragmentation and stuff, I was terrified that it was going to be an impossible nightmare for someone as crappy at coding as I am... but then I was floored when I found it to be a relative BREEZE to handle, and I've still been wondering what all of the commotion has been all about.

I have also been following the developer of ReplicaIsland, and his game appears to run on pretty much every android phone on the planet, without so much as a hiccup, and he's using more advanced canvas and openGL stuff. What am I missing here? Will I run into some unknown problem that I won't be able to handle because I'm just a noob?

Most of the upcoming tablet offerings out of Asia will run Google's Android operating system—not because it's a great tablet OS, but because it's free, available, and has a growing roster of apps.

This is the interesting and thought provoking comment. Imagine, its the early eighties, and we are hearing about an exhibition of PC hardware someplace in the US, with entries from lots and lots of companies. And someone says, they all run DOS. Not that there is anything so great about DOS, but its available.... Or its a bit later, and they now all run Windows. Not that there is anything so great about Windows, but its available....

A bit later on Apple is proclaiming to the world that 3% marketshare was all it ever wanted. Who cares about market share?

Thats because computers have reached a commodity status where Apple can get 30% of the profits in the industry with 3% of the marketshare.

I think the point was the differing screen resolutions apps will have to adapt to makes it harder for developers and consumers alike. If you go from 480X320 to 960X640, then the OS can just double up the pixel and be done with it. When you also have 1024X600, 1024X768, 800X600, 1280X800, etc., it means you have to make sure your UI can handle all that without compromising usability or look a scaled up fulgy mess.

That's just stupid. Desktop OS's ( apart from OS X which still lacks dpi scaling option) can handle all sort of resolutions without a problem. Tablet OS's will be able to do the same as well.

Uh, while it's true that Desktop OS's can handle multiple resolutions (because they must) that doesn't mean anything except that it can be done (which nobody was arguing). The point about multiple resolutions is that you must create different layouts for each resolution which increases the amount of overhead for developing for a certain platform. Since Apple controls all devices that will run its OS (for good or ill) it can minimize the number of hardware profiles for which developers need to develop. Android has to be able to run on anything thrown at it. Think about developing for a PC vs. Console. Anyhow, before you start calling people stupid you should probably be certain you understand what's being discussed. Otherwise you just look, uh, stupid.

Why would people want to buy ChromeOS devices? You can't make use of locally stored media with those, only streaming. And WebGL support ain't here yet, much less WebGL for mobile devices. ChromeOS is still a good five years away from being more attractive than Android OS, Web OS or iPhone OS X, if it ever will be. Note that everything ChromeOS can do, Android OS can also do, or can be made to do relatively easily.

I think the point was the differing screen resolutions apps will have to adapt to makes it harder for developers and consumers alike. If you go from 480X320 to 960X640, then the OS can just double up the pixel and be done with it. When you also have 1024X600, 1024X768, 800X600, 1280X800, etc., it means you have to make sure your UI can handle all that without compromising usability or look a scaled up fulgy mess.

That's just stupid. Desktop OS's ( apart from OS X which still lacks dpi scaling option) can handle all sort of resolutions without a problem. Tablet OS's will be able to do the same as well.

Uh, while it's true that Desktop OS's can handle multiple resolutions (because they must) that doesn't mean anything except that it can be done (which nobody was arguing). The point about multiple resolutions is that you must create different layouts for each resolution which increases the amount of overhead for developing for a certain platform. Since Apple controls all devices that will run its OS (for good or ill) it can minimize the number of hardware profiles for which developers need to develop. Android has to be able to run on anything thrown at it. Think about developing for a PC vs. Console. Anyhow, before you start calling people stupid you should probably be certain you understand what's being discussed. Otherwise you just look, uh, stupid.

That's stupid. Even on OS X, all the applications are designed to run on various sized windows, and the application layout scales well to the window size.

Ars where the fanboy writes that 'this article is poorly researched why are you writing at Ars' instead of you "suk at writing n00b STFU"

Yes it is easer to adjust for different sizes in Android but will tablets take off without really good apps or people bother to make the killer apps if they are not popular. Tablets have different interface needs because of size more than pixl count but most apps made for the iPhone suck (in comparison) to native apps. You need to have a minimum number of users to be viable.

I doubt different resolutions will be much of an impediment to Android marketshare. If anything the lack of any performance targets hardware wise should be more crippling than the lack of defined screen resolutions. This won't affect Android's growth but on the retail side it will make the experience more confusing.

IMO Apple's recent success probably owes much more to the retail equation than to anything else. Can we expect sales people who get a better commission on certain models of Android devices to push for those irrespective of the quality? Can we expect the marketing to devolve in Ghz, RAM and screen inches because there are so many hardware companies trying to make the case that theirs is better. All that won't impede Android but while Apple can sell the forest, how is Google going to have an effective marketing campaign with a free OS and dozens of vendors trying to distinguish themselves by basically trying to sell the tree? This won't affect everyone, but I think retail confusion is probably Android's weakest attribute going forward, more so than developers dealing with varying hardware targets.

I attribute the success of Android over the iPhone by offering consumers much more choice in capabilities, restrictions, carreers, and prices. When 2.2 begins hitting the market it should make things much more attractive as that now Android will have superior media support and syncing capabilities/software then what is avialable for iPhone/iTunes users.

I expect this trend to continue with Android Tablets and that in terms of sales and capabilities.